Improvement of catalytic activity of Fe₃O₄/CuO/TiO₂ nanocomposites using the combination of ultrasonic and UV light irradiation for degradation of organic dyes

Iron-copper-titania mixed oxides was synthesized with Fe3O4/CuO to various TiO2 molar ratio using sol-gel method at low temperature and the intrinsic characteristics were studied by a variety of techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and BET surface area analyzer. The results demonstrate that all samples contained Fe3O4, CuO and TiO2 structures and exhibited ferromagnetic behavior at room temperature. In this study, methylene blue is used as a model of organic dyes. The degradation of methylene blue was observed using sonocatalysis and photocatalysis systems simultaneously. The experimental results showed that kinetic data followed the pseudo-first order model and the apparent rate constant of simultaneously processes of sonocatalysis and photocatalysis is higher than the respective individual processes.